


you're in my head.

by katarama



Series: boy. [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Best Friends, Canon Compliant, Crushes, Friends to Lovers, Insecurity, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Prequel, School Dances, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2016-07-11
Packaged: 2018-07-22 22:12:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7455811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katarama/pseuds/katarama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That night, Stiles lays in bed as Scott snores on the air mattress on the floor.  He takes stock of the night, of his low grade embarrassment about some of the things he said when he was all tingly, and of his dancing abilities.  </p><p>Mostly, though, he lays in bed thinking about Scott’s mouth, wondering why, when he saw it up close, he felt the urge to press his own mouth against it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you're in my head.

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a prequel to the previous fic. Be prepared for some feelings. This 'verse is going to happen a little bit at a time, so while it seems like it's unrequited now, I promise things will work out in the end. You just have to bear with me a little bit.
> 
> Enjoy!

Stiles isn’t friends with anyone who actually likes school dances.

He’s sure people who actually like school dances exist.  The group of people who Stiles is friends with is very small, and consists of always Scott and sometimes Harley.  Harley always skips out of dances to hang out with the girls in their class.  She fusses about having to wear a dress and about the music they play, and she says it’s much more fun to do sleepovers with her friends.  She always calls skipping out a form of protesting, though Stiles suspects that’s just to make herself sound cool.  

Stiles can’t even pretend to be as cool as Harley.  Stiles doesn’t like dances because he never has a date.

Back in middle school, he tried asking out girls in their class, but he always ended up embarrassing himself when they shot him down.  Lydia always did it with particular flair.  Harley wouldn’t go along as his platonic date.  Scott didn’t even ask anyone out.  Scott was always on the shyer side, and had more self-preservation instincts than Stiles.  Scott handles rejection a lot worse than Stiles, too.

“Just you and me, buddy,” Stiles would say as Melissa dropped them off at the door of the middle school gymnasium.

“We always have fun together,” Scott would reply, ever the optimist.  

Stiles thinks there’s innuendo in there.  But while Stiles is big on drawing attention to every possible form of innuendo he can, he always lets that one slide.

When they graduate middle school and move onto high school, Stiles decides things are going to be different.  His freshman year, he doesn’t ask anyone.  Or, well.  He asks Lydia, out of tradition, but he doesn’t actually think she’s going to go for it.  He makes a big production of going stag, talking about how nice it’s going to be not having to pay for his date’s ticket or a corsage.  He ignores the teasing that no date means no getting laid, because he’s pretty positive that, at 14, most people are actually getting laid after homecoming.  

Regardless, there are minimal amounts of pre-dance humiliation.  He and Scott make plans to meet up beforehand at Stiles’ place and order in pizza.  Stiles thinks it’s shaping up to be a really great year, and that he can spend the night dancing and drinking the rumored spiked punch he’s seen in every high school movie ever.

“You know that’s not a real thing, right?” Harley says skeptically.  “No one actually spikes the punch.”

“It’s gonna happen,” Stiles says, totally confident.  “The student council loves us too much to let us go through this sober.”

Stiles is pretty sure that at a bigger school, or a school that gave more fucks, he would probably have ended up wrong.  But good old Beacon Hills High is reliable that way.  Finstock is supposed to be watching the punch, but it definitely ends up with a rubbing alcohol kind of aftertaste that Stiles isn’t entirely convinced won’t kill him.  Stiles drinks two cups.  Scott takes one and sips at it, his nose wrinkling every time he holds it up to his lips.

“If you aren’t gonna drink it, we should dance,” Stiles says.  Scott looks relieved, setting the plastic cup down on the nearest table.

“Let’s dance,” Scott agrees, grabbing Stiles’ hand.  Stiles’ heart skips a beat.  He lets that slide, too.

They head to the DJ booth and put in a request for the filthiest songs they can think of that the school would actually play and head out to the dance floor.  The DJ isn’t gonna play the pop punk music Scott and Stiles actually like best, so they figure it’s the best they can do.  Stiles feels like his dance moves are improving over time, though that might be partly because of the way everything is a little bit loose and slow.  He gets lots of looks, so he figures he’s looking pretty great.  He winks at Lydia, and he gets one of her quality eyerolls in return.

After a while, there are some slow dances, so Stiles goes to pee and grabs some water and another cup of punch for him and Scott to share.  Dancing requires rehydration, and Stiles is very comfortably buzzy.  He figures just a little more of whatever’s in the punch can’t hurt that much, and when he takes a sip, it tastes a lot less like death than he remembered.

“We should go back out there to dance,” Stiles informs Scott when the cup is empty.  “Gotta show off how cool I look.”

Scott is a wonderful friend, and he wholeheartedly agrees that Stiles looks pretty cool.  They head back to the dance floor, and Stiles thinks everything is maybe just a little swoopier and tiltier than before when he stands up, but everything feels good.  Dancing is fun.  Dancing with Scott is fun.  

And then, another chain of slow songs comes on.

“We can sit down for a while,” Scott suggests.  Stiles can see couples pairing up around them, and if Stiles were a little bit less fuzzy, he would probably be loudly talking about how great it is going to a dance alone and not having to worry about getting his feet stepped on.  But the music is super slow and super sappy, and Stiles’ balance is maybe not the best, and he kinda leans against Scott without really thinking too hard about it.

“Gonna dance together now,” Stiles says.  Scott is shorter than him, but Stiles isn’t standing up straight, anyway.  Stiles can comfortably wrap his arms around Scott’s shoulders and let Scott pull him close, Scott’s soft, warm body a reassuring anchor to stop the dizziness.

“You okay?” Scott asks.  Stiles can hear the concern in his voice, and Stiles knows the second they sit down, Scott’s gonna bring him whatever food he can scrounge up, and lots of water.  

Stiles spends a lot of time considering Scott’s question carefully.  He doesn’t feel sick.  His body feels good, even better now that it’s snuggled up in Scott’s arms.  The music is really terrible, but that’s not something Scott can fix for Stiles.  Scott can fix a lot of things, but not that.  Overall, Stiles thinks he is comfortable declaring that he is okay.

Stiles straightens himself up, just a little bit, and looks at Scott’s face to deliver the verdict.  Stiles hadn’t predicted how close his face would be to Scott’s, though.  He can feel Scott’s warm, slow breath on his cheek and can see the deep brown of Scott’s eyes.  He can see every mole and freckle on Scott’s face, the unevenness of Scott’s jaw.

The softness of Scott’s mouth.

“Stiles?” Scott says, more insistent, this time.  “Are you there?”

“Yeah,” Stiles says.  He doesn’t think he ever paid enough attention to the way Scott’s whole forehead goes Concerned when Scott’s, well.  Concerned.  “Just dancing, you know.  Slow dancing.  Dancing slow.”

Scott laughs, and Stiles feels warm.  Warmer than before.  He’s been kinda steadily warm for a while now, at first because of the punch, and then because of the dancing.  He catches the edge of a stray thought and has to share it with Scott.  “I think if I get any warmer I’m gonna start floating.  Since I’m already full of hot air, and warm air rises.”

“Water,” Scott says wisely.  “Water cools you down.  And stops you from breaking science.”

They spend a lot of the rest of the dance sitting and drinking water.  Stiles’ dad is picking them up in the patrol car, and Scott is entirely too reasonable in his thinking that maybe Stiles shouldn’t be plastered when the Sheriff shows.  Scott teases Stiles for it, later, when it’s time to settle in for bed, and Stiles tries to push back and pull off bravado he doesn’t actually have.

They’re brushing their teeth, and Stiles is trying hard not to think too much.  It’s not something he’s ever been very good at, especially not when he’s in such close proximity to Scott.  Scott averts his eyes when Stiles flosses, because Stiles is weird about people watching him floss, and Scott tries entirely too hard to be respectful.  

“Do you ever wish you brought someone with you to dances?” Stiles asks Scott as he throws his floss away.  “There’s gotta be something more fun than taking care of my drunk ass.”

“I don’t mind spending time with you,” Scott says.  It isn’t entirely an answer.  Stiles isn’t sure if that was intentional or not.  “Do you need to borrow a towel tomorrow morning?”

“Yeah, that’d be great,” Stiles says.  He reaches for his toothbrush, and silence falls again, and Stiles is thinking.

That night, Stiles lays in bed as Scott snores on the air mattress on the floor.  He takes stock of the night, of his low grade embarrassment about some of the things he said when he was all tingly, and of his dancing abilities.  

Mostly, though, he lays in bed thinking about Scott’s mouth, wondering why, when he saw it up close, he felt the urge to press his own mouth against it.

* * *

 

Stiles hovers around “drunken fluke” for a while.  He’s comfortable with that idea.  He knows alcohol lowers inhibitions.  Lots of people do things when they they are intoxicated that they wouldn’t do when they were sober.  

But now that he’s thought about Scott that way, he can’t seem to get rid of it.  It’s one of those “oh” moments, when Stiles sits down and looks at his life and thinks maybe there was something he was missing.  That maybe he was relieved that Scott never brought a date to dances for reasons other than just wanting to platonically spend the time with Scott.  And maybe there was something other than just excitement over friendship when he got all warm and fuzzy having Scott run his fingers through Stiles’ hair, or cuddle Stiles in his bed.  It’s a different lens that maybe he didn’t entirely consider before.

And then he’s thinking about boys, and he’s trying to ask Danny questions and getting ignored, which is only making him think about it even more, and suddenly this has snowballed.

Bisexual, he settles on.  Bisexual and with maybe a solidly confirmed attraction to his best friend.  Maybe even a crush.  Probably a crush, though Stiles doesn’t know that he’s willing to jump into that territory out loud yet.

The bisexual bit he tells Scott.  The maybe sort of probably crush bit, he does not.

Things go back to normal.  A new normal, a normal where Stiles now does stuff like think about kissing Scott when they’re sprawled out together on the floor in front of the TV, knocking elbows as they play video games.  A normal where Stiles starts wondering how dates with best friends work, and what makes them any different from just hanging out.

A normal where sophomore year homecoming up, and Stiles spends an entire month agonizing over whether he should ask Scott out for it.

“I don’t think we have to go to homecoming this year, do we?” Stiles asks, instead.  If he isn’t going at all, he doesn’t have to make that decision.  “There’s a winter dance too, now that we’re sophomores.  We don’t have to go to both, do we?”

“We can skip the winter one, I think,” Scott says.  “Homecoming is the big dance of the year, though.  It’ll be you and me, like always.  It’ll be fun.  I think even Harley’s coming, this time.”

“She’ll come with her girlfriend, but not with us,” Stiles huffs.  You and me.  God.  “What a traitor.”

“Her girlfriend’s way more exciting than we are,” Scott points out.  Scott isn’t wrong, but Stiles still feels like he has to be mortally offended, just on the principle of the matter.  

“Maybe we should protest it this year, then, if Harley’s going,” Stiles tries again.  “We can object to… I’m not sure what, but there’s gotta be something wrong with it.  It’s a school dance.  No one has fun at school dances.”

“You did last year,” Scott says.  “We can not go if you really don’t want to, but it could be lots of fun.”

“Harley will have a date, and we won’t,” Stiles responds.

“We never have dates, dude,” Scott says.  “We can still go to the dance.”

Stiles doesn’t pay a lot of attention to it, at first, because it’s like.  Entirely true.  It’s like a statement of fact, as inherent as some birds flying and the sky often being blue.  Between that and the steadily building anxiety of trying to decide what to do, Stiles isn’t exactly as focused as he should be.

He doesn’t hear the way Scott’s voice goes slightly soft.  He doesn’t hear the way Scott’s voice tinges with a little bit of sadness, the quiet kind Scott gets when he’s about to put a smile back on his face and pretend the sadness was never there in the first place.

Stiles starts talking about going to the diner before the dance, instead.  

* * *

 

Stiles chickens out.

He doesn’t ask Scott to the dance.  He doesn’t even ask Lydia to the dance.  He sits there and stews and waits and makes himself progressively more anxious.  But he doesn’t ask anyone.  He spends most of his time before the dance aggressively not deciding anything, except for that Harley’s girlfriend really is about ten times cooler than Scott and Stiles put together.

Scott seems a lot less excited about the dance this time around than he usually is.  Stiles isn’t sure what’s going on, but even though they’ve already bought tickets, Stiles isn’t opposed to Scott deciding that he wants to spend the night in playing video games and eating takeout, instead.

Scott doesn’t.  Stiles doesn’t say anything.  They go to the dance.

It turns out that the year before was a lucky fluke, and that whatever rich alcohol gods descended on the punch the year before either graduated or are not as vigilant about refilling.  The punch is just punch, a little watery from the melting ice, but otherwise just incredibly sweet.  Scott mostly doesn’t seem to care, either way.  Stiles is slightly disappointed.

They dance for a while and then take a break.  Harley and her girlfriend make the dancing pretty fun, Stiles has to admit.  Although Scott ducks out to pee the second a slow dance starts up, Stiles unabashedly dances with the couple, Harley holding his hand, twirling him and grinning widely.  They get a lot of strange looks, and Stiles wouldn’t be surprised if he gets some questions at school on Monday, but he’s having too much fun to care.

“Scott’s been gone a long time,” Harley notes at the end of a song.  “Do you think he’s okay?”

“He’s probably in the bathroom, still, or grabbing water,” Stiles says.  “I’ll go check on him.”

Scott isn’t by the drinks table, and he isn’t in the bathroom.  Stiles starts to get a little bit worried.  He texts Scott asking him where he is, and he waits anxiously for a response, sitting at one of the chairs along the edge of the room and tapping impatiently at the plastic to the rhythm of the music.

“You’re dweeby friend is moping in the locker room by himself,” Jackson tells Stiles as he passes by.  “You’d better go get him.  Lydia and I went there to make out, and it was a mood-killer.”

Stiles aggressively does not thank Jackson, but he heads through the school and to the locker room as quickly as he can.  Stiles flicks the light and walks through, calling Scott’s name as he checks between each row of lockers.

“Stiles?” Scott finally responds.  Stiles follows the sound of his voice and finds him sitting on the bench between the last row of lockers.  

“Dude, what the fuck,” Stiles says, sitting down next to Scott on the bench.  He wants to reach out and hug Scott, or to check him over and make sure he’s okay, but he thinks that’s probably just him overreacting.  “Why didn’t you check your phone?”

“Sorry,” Scott says.  “I got distracted.”

“Hey now, that’s my job,” Stiles says, nudging Scott with his elbow.  “You can’t go stealing my job, especially if it means you aren’t responding to texts.”

“Sorry,” Scott says again.  

“Are you okay?” Stiles asks.  “Is something wrong?”

Scott shakes his head and pulls out his phone to mark Stiles’ text read.  “Nah, dude, we’re good.  Just needed a bit of space.  Things were really crowded, and I kinda felt like I couldn’t breathe a bit.”

“Do you need your inhaler?” Stiles responds immediately.  “You had one in here, right, you don’t need me to grab your extra?”

“Yeah,” Scott says.  He isn’t meeting Stiles’ eyes, and Stiles isn’t sure why.  “I had one.  We’re good.”  He pockets his phone again and eases off the bench.  “You ready to head back in there?”

“Are you sure you don’t want to go home?” Stiles asks as he stands up.  “I can call my dad to come get us early.  He’s probably close, with the risk of drunk drivers out tonight.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Scott says.  “I’m okay.  Let’s just get back in there, okay?”

Something feels incredibly off to Stiles, and Stiles can’t entirely put his finger on what it is.  But he decides not to press it just yet.  

“Sure,” Stiles says, and he follows Scott out of the locker room.  They grab some water and head back out to dance.  Harley gives Stiles quizzical looks all night, and Stiles shrugs when Scott isn’t looking.  He’s worried, and he spends most of the night wanting to check in with Scott to make sure he’s breathing okay.

He doesn’t, though.  He feels like maybe it might be too obvious, or too much.

* * *

 

Stiles is relieved when they head home.  Scott is quiet.  Stiles figures he’s just a little bit shaken, or something.  He’s glad that they told his dad to come on the earlier side of things, though, so they could get out of there as soon as possible.

“School dances suck,” Stiles says when his dad asks how it was.  He doesn’t rat Scott out, though, because he knows it would get back to Scott’s mom, and that she would fret.

It takes Scott until they get back to Stiles’ place before he really says much.  Stiles finds the shittiest horror movie he can find on Netflix and hooks his computer up to the TV, curling up next to Scott on the couch with popcorn and talking the entire way through the movie.

Stiles’ dad still isn’t home when it ends, but Stiles is yawning.  He doesn’t want to be the one to suggest going to bed, because he’s totally down for mountain dew-ing up and watching another, and Scott is usually the one who gets tired at more normal times.

Scott doesn’t suggest going to bed, though.

“Sorry I was so weird tonight,” he says, instead.

“You were pretty weird tonight,” Stiles agrees.  “Is everything okay?  Like, actually okay.  Because it kinda seemed like maybe things weren’t.”

“It’s silly,” Scott says, almost a warning.  “You’re gonna think it’s silly.”

“Try me.”

Scott weighs it for a moment, silent and staring at his hands.  Stiles almost thinks that he broke Scott, and that he’s gonna have to start up a painfully awkward conversation to avoid whatever this apparently serious one is.  

“Do you ever worry you’re gonna be alone?” Scott asks.

“You aren’t gonna be alone,” Stiles says, nipping that in the bud.  “You’ve got me.”

“No, I-”  Scott pauses.  “I mean do you ever worry that no one’s ever going to want you?  To date you, or…”

“Bone me?” Stiles asks.

Scott takes a deep breath, settling more easily into Stiles’ side.  Stiles isn’t sure if it’s relief at the feeling of not having to be the one to say it out loud, or whether it’s despondency.  Stiles doesn’t know what despondent really looks like on Scott.  It isn’t a familiar expression on Scott’s face, the inward curve of Scott’s body making Stiles’ stomach drop.

“I don’t even know that I want sex, some of the time,” Scott admits.  “But I know that I worry no one will ever want it with me.  That I’m not, like.  Sexy.  I’m not a Jackson, or a Danny, or like most of the guys on the lacrosse team.  And with the dating thing, I’m too awkward, or not cool enough.  I’m pretty sure I’m actually terrible with girls.  The only girl I’m even friends with is Harley.  And most of the time, I’m okay with it.  I have you.  I have my mom, and Harley.  It’s not like I have no one.  I just wonder, sometimes.  If I were smarter or funnier or more handsome.  If maybe there were something about me that was attractive.  I can’t even really get a date to the dance.”

Stiles knows this is the part where he’s supposed to be sympathetic.  Stiles knows that this is the part where he’s supposed to ignore the way his breath is catching, the way he feels vaguely sick.  Stiles knows this is the part where he’s supposed to pull Scott in close and tells him that he’s amazing, that he’s handsome and funny and smarter than anyone actually gives him credit for.  He’s supposed to reassure him that in a world bigger than their year at Beacon Hills High, Scott is going to find someone he likes, someone who sees Scott for every wonderful thing about him, who realizes how honestly good Scott is.  Someone who appreciates the fact that Scott can be surprisingly sneaky and just as terrible at planning as Stiles.

Stiles knows that this is the point where he’s supposed to be a good friend.

“You didn’t try to get a date to the dance,” he says instead.

Scott’s eyes leave his hands to find Stiles’ eyes.  “If even you can’t get a date, who would actually want me to take them?”

“Any sane human being,” Stiles says.  His words come out sharper than he means them to, and he runs after his words to soften them.  “I mean, like.  You realize you aren’t just a piece of shit with no value, right?  You’re not Jackson.  You’re better than him.  You give two shits about other people and their feelings, and that’s something he definitely can’t say.”

“I’m not as attractive as him, though.”

“That’s bullshit,” Stiles says.  He can’t explain why the conversation is making him angry.  It could be the fact that Scott is so, so, monumentally, incredibly wrong.  It could be the fact that Scott is ready to give up on himself without even really seeing the reality of the situation, that Scott is hot and amazing and that the only reason no one has seen it yet is because he spends all his time with Stiles.  It could be the fact that Stiles knows there’s someone sitting right next to Scott, someone who would gladly hold his hand and take him to shitty movies and make out with him in the back of the theater, someone who would gladly do the ridiculous slow dances Stiles loves to make fun of out on the floor at the shitty high school dances.  It’s probably a combination of all of them.  But it eats at Stiles, making his stomach sour.  He wants to lash out.  He wants to be too honest, to confront Scott with the truth just to see how reacts.  

“I just want someone to kiss me,” Scott says softly.  “I’ve never even had anyone want that.”

Some of Stiles’ anger diffuses, gone as quickly as it came and replaced by guilt.  “You know there are gonna be lots of people out there that want to kiss you, right?  I bet there are people at school who want to kiss you, and just haven’t gotten up the nerve yet.”

“You really think so?” Scott asks hesitantly.

“Dude, I’m just waiting for someone to buck up and do it,” Stiles says.  He reaches an arm around Scott and pulls him close.  “I’m fucking terrified of you leaving me behind.  Because I know that you’re worth so much, and one of these days, someone’s gonna see it.  Someone’s gonna realize you got hot and they’re gonna kiss you until you get one of those Disney prince foot lifting kisses, or whatever.  I’m just waiting for the day you call me on the phone and start telling me about how good your first kiss was.  It’s only a matter of time.”

Scott buries his face in Stiles’ arm, and the two of them sit like that for a while.  Scott doesn’t say anything, turning Stiles’ words over in his head.  Stiles only knows he’s awake by the steady rise and fall of his chest, Scott’s hot breath on Stiles’ arm.  

“You’re good,” Stiles says.  “It’s hard not to see that.”

Scott gives him a big hug and thanks him.  Scott tells him that he doesn’t think Stiles is right, but that he appreciates that Stiles said it.  Scott says he was just having a weird night, an insecure night.  That objectively he knows that they’re young, and that he’ll find _someone_  out there in the big world who will love him.

Stiles doesn’t tell him that that person is right there next to him, because Stiles knows Scott doesn’t like boys.  Stiles knows that he’s just Scott’s friend, and he doesn’t want to ruin things, or make them uncomfortable.  He wants to be the person Scott can trust with these feelings.  Scott has to have someone to be able to trust with them.

“Get some sleep,” Stiles says.  “I’m sure you’ll feel better in the morning.”

“You’re the best,” Scott tells him earnestly.  “And anyone would be lucky to be with you, too.”

* * *

 

“Stiles!” Scott says.  His voice is bright and eager, bubbling over.  “She kissed me.”

Everything has been Allison, Allison, Allison lately.  Stiles shouldn’t be surprised.  From the moment Stiles saw Scott looking back at her in class, lending her a pen and pulling out the dimples, Stiles should have known this was where things were headed.

It still feels like a kick in the teeth, though, as inevitable as it was.  It still leaves acid in Stiles’ gut, a burn uncomfortably close to what Stiles can identify as jealousy.

“That’s awesome, Scott,” he says.

His voice sounds hollow, even to him.

He’s just going to have to get used to the feeling.

**Author's Note:**

> On tumblr [here](http://sleepy-skittles.tumblr.com).


End file.
